Conservative Commentary Since 2012

Democrats Attack Trump’s Expanded Travel Ban

It is clear to even those Americans who are less politically savvy why Democrats want illegal immigration to continue—they want to build their voter block and throw away national boundaries.

What really makes one scratch their head in confusion, however, is why they want to see American lives put at risk by inviting unvetted criminals and terrorists into the country.

Immediately following the Department of Homeland Security’s recommendation to expand Trump’s travel ban, which currently applies to people from Iran, Libya, Syria, Somalia and Yemen, Trump was once again attacked for being a racist and a bigot.

Regardless of what the Democrats and the mainstream media said of the original travel ban, which is that it is anti-Muslim and racists, the ban wasn’t based on skin color or religion.

Rather, the plan assessed three specific criteria in determining whether certain nations were a national security or public safety threat:

Whether a foreign government engages in reliable identity-management practices and shares relevant information;

Whether a foreign government shares national security and public-safety information; and

Whether a country poses a national security or public-safety risk.

Following a comprehensive review of the performance of approximately 200 countries using this criteria, the Secretary of Homeland Security released the results in January ahead of the expanded ban. The report focused on those countries that were deficient or at risk of becoming deficient in their performance under the assessment criteria.

Chad Wolf, the Acting Secretary of Homeland Security recommended maintaining the current restrictions on the seven countries announced in Proclamation 9645 (apart from Chad), as well as implementing suspensions and limitations on entry for certain nationals of 12 additional countries.

Like the seven countries that continue to face travel restrictions pursuant to Proclamation 9645, the six additional countries recommended for restrictions in the January 2020 proposal are among the worst performing in the world and will take effect on February 21.

Trump announced on January 31, the expanded travel ban would include citizens of Nigeria, Eritrea, Myanmar and Kyrgyzstan from immigrating to the U.S., although they will still be permitted to apply to travel to America for business or pleasure.

The ban will also bar Sudan and Tanzania from the diversity visa program, which awards green cards via lottery, however some citizens might be able to obtain waivers.

All of the barred countries failed to meet U.S. security and information-sharing standards. The problems officials cited ranged from substandard passport technology to a failure to sufficiently exchange information on terrorism suspects and criminals.

But the Democrats, who have always been against the original travel ban based solely on racial identity and a desire for open borders, are incensed at the expanded ban.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said, “In the coming weeks, the House Judiciary Committee will mark-up and bring to the floor the NO BAN Act to prohibit religious discrimination in our immigration system and limit the President’s ability to impose such biased and bigoted restrictions. We will never allow hatred or bigotry to define our nation or destroy our values.”

Pelosi was referring to legislation introduced in April 2019 by Rep. Judy Chu, D-Calif, who spearheaded The National Origin-Based Anti-discrimination for Nonimmigrants (NO BAN) Act, H.R. 2214, which seeks to repeal Trump’s travel ban on citizens of seven countries and limit the president’s authority to issue bans in the future. Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., introduced a companion bill in the Senate.

The bills, unsurprisingly, attempt to usurp presidential powers for national security and would require the President, State Department and the DHS to seek congressional approval before imposing a restriction.

“The State Department and DHS shall report to Congress about the restriction within 48 hours of the restriction’s imposition, with regular updates. If such reports are not made, the restriction shall immediately terminate.”

Rep. Chu said of the expansion, “By specifically targeting permanent visas, which are used by families, and not impacting short-term visitor visas, this ban shows it was never about security, and always about keeping Muslims and people of color from having the same chance at the American Dream that everyone else has.”

But what the Democrats fail to understand—all 214 of them that cosponsored the house bill—is that Americans don’t care about the color of people’s skin or what religion they practice, but they do care about national security. And yes, they do want to be protected against the spread of fundamental and violent political religious terrorist groups that seeks to destroy Western values.

Democrats also don’t want you to know that many of these African nation’s do have an American Dream, but it is one of conquest, submission to Islam, and death to Americans.

Democrats want us to forget that a suicide bomber drove a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device (VBIED) into the United Nations (U.N.) headquarters in Abuja, Nigeria, killing 23 people and injuring more than 80 others on August 26, 2011.

The bombing, one of the deadliest in the United Nations’ history, was claimed by Boko Haram, an Islamist religious sect turned insurgent group based in the predominantly Muslim northern Nigeria.

In the weeks following the U.N. bombing, a video surfaced from the perpetrator of the attack describing the United Nations as a forum for‘‘all global evil’’ and stated the attacks were designed to ‘‘send a message to the U.S. President and ‘other infidels. ’’ And it has only gotten worse in the ensuing years.

According to Ambassador Anthony Holmes, Deputy to the Commander for Civil-Military Activities (DCMA) of United States Africa Command (AFRICOM), members of Boko Haram as early as 2011 were being trained by Al Qaeda in the Lands of the Islamic Maghreb. They are also believed to have ties to the Somalian militant group al-Shabaab. And he was right.

“They came from Somalia and other African nations,” according to a Homeland Security official who was caught transporting a busload of Africans to a detention center near Victorville, California. Somalia is the home base of al-Shabab, a designated foreign terrorist organization.

This cooperation among terror groups, combined with the increased sophistication of attacks executed by Boko Haram, alarmed the U.S. Intelligence Community over the sect’s intent and capability to strike Western targets in Nigeria, throughout Africa, and most important, the U.S. homeland.

Historically, Boko Haram was focused on Nigerian government targets and until recently Western intelligence services didn’t widely view them as a potential threat. Even after the U.N. attack, Nigerian experts remained skeptical about Boko Haram’s intent and capability to strike U.S. interests and the homeland.

However, this wasn’t the first time the U.S. intelligence community had underestimated the intent and capability of other terrorist groups to launch attacks against the U.S. homeland.

The U.S. Intelligence Community and outside counter terrorism and intelligence experts had assessed that al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, also known as the Pakistani Taliban were regionally-based groups with a target set limited to Western-supported governments or, at worst, American interests in the Middle East and South Asia.

These assessments and general assumptions nearly proved fatal when a series of attempted attacks planned, directed and executed by these two groups were thwarted on Christmas Day 2009 on Northwest Airlines flight 253 over Detroit and in May 2010 in New York City’s Times Square.

Given the the speed these Muslim terrorist groups have grown over the last 9 years and become operational with apparently meager resources, has forced the U.S. government to take threats to the U.S. homeland seriously.

Given the high levels of Muslim terrorist groups in those African nation’s named in the expanded travel ban, the real question isn’t why Trump is intentionally hurting brown and black people from poor African nations because he is a bigot, as Vox, Washington Post and the New York Times wants us to believe. No, the real question is why don’t Democrats care about national security and the safety of American citizens?